


Foliage

by entanglednow



Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-28
Updated: 2009-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It started off as a handful of seeds, that Connor found on one of those dead tortoise things, three hours ago," Ryan provided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foliage

 

Lester gets back to the Arc at 9pm, which is exactly three hours _after_ the evening started to go to hell.

He hasn't come straight from home, because he's wearing black tie, which suggests he's come here straight from some official function, or at least, formal occasion. Ryan meets him by the main doors, both because he has _some_ idea of what's going on, and because everyone else is either occupied, or isn't answering their radio. Lester's also wearing his usual irritated expression.

Ryan doesn't need to explain the first half of the problem, it's more of a show and tell situation by now.

The plant, one of the botanists did name it two hours ago but Ryan can't for the life of him bring all that bloody Latin back to mind, has covered the walls, the supports, and the ceilings, the lights are tangled up tight, leaving jagged high shadows on the ground.

It's still moving, shifting and creeping, occasionally bits of plaster clatter down the walls, from where it's slowly burying itself in everything that isn't made of metal.

Lester surveys the damage, though his only reaction is a slight tilt of eyebrow, and the sigh of a man who can't leave the office for five minutes without some random prehistoric period making a _wreck_ of the place.

"I'm going to assume," he starts calmly. "That this is some sort of horrible accident, and not, the result of another one of Cutter's ill-thought out plans gone awry."

"It started off as a handful of seeds that Connor found on one of those dead tortoise things three hours ago." Ryan provided, following Lester, not up the long walkway, which was already infested with vines, leaves and the tiny beginnings of buds, but through to the lower offices.

"Of course it did, and the situation now is?"

"I think the plant has started eating people."

Lester stops beside a desk that isn't his, lays his palms on the glass and gives Ryan a very serious look.

Then he sits down in the chair.

"I think you better start at the beginning," he says calmly.

So Ryan does, he tells Lester about the experiments Cutter ran on the seeds, about how they germinated in the laboratory, broke through the ceiling, into the ventilation and through the levels over the course of an hour. How people turned up missing when he called a head count, and how offices disappeared behind walls of foliage more than two feet thick. And lastly, of how there were trails of blood running through some of the lower corridors, shredded trails of leaves, like someone had tried to claw themselves free.

"I haven't seen Cutter for an hour and a half," he finished. "Stephen had guns out of the armory but I haven't heard anything."

Lester rubs the back of his neck.

"I would hope Captain Ryan, that by now this assignment has taught you to treat everything as though it may, at a moment's notice, attempt to start tearing you limb from limb."

"I always do sir," Ryan said slowly.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you."

Which, coming from Lester, is something more than a compliment.

Lester throws his expensive coat over the back of the chair.

"So, am I also to assume that our intrepid dinosaur hunters are now trapped somewhere?"

"As far as we can tell they're still in the lab, though the life signs are...not exactly reliable at the moment."

"Of course they're not." Lester picks at the middle of his tie, unraveling it in two smooth movements.

"Since the possibility that I'd be devoured by plant life never occurred to me today, or possibly any day, we'll have to work on our plan of action as we go. I assume we have some sort of heavy duty cutting equipment?"

"I have Harper looking in the armory now."

"A flamethrower might be a good idea too," Lester says smoothly, in the same voice that anyone else might use to request more paper.

Ryan doesn't bother to hide his smile.

"That's on the list too sir."

"It's nice to know there's someone here who has a sensible grasp of the phrase ' _threat appropriate_.'

"I like to be prepared," Ryan says simply, because it's true. Even if this place does have a rather elastic idea of what ' _prepared_ ' entails from day to day.

"Then if you could clear the lower corridors leading to the laboratories I would be very grateful. Take enough men to avoid any unfortunate plant-related incidents."

"Yes, sir."

It's a dismissal, though Ryan doesn't like the way the ceiling is creaking, and shifting overhead. This place was built to keep things out, or in, it wasn't built to be slowly broken to pieces by something from the Little Shop of Horrors.

Ryan swings his gun round his back, catches the loose edge of Lester's tie, and does something he probably wouldn't do in public, if a prehistoric plant wasn't currently trying to devour everything around him.

Lester is always so sharp and serious when he's working, and Ryan discovers, finally, that he tastes like it too. A different hardness to when he simply wants his own way.

Lester briefly objects to being crushed against his equipment, though he doesn't protest enough to pull free, or dig his teeth in anywhere sensitive. Ryan's tempted to make a wreck of his carefully combed hair, but he's good at resisting temptation. Which is a special sort of survival skill where James is concerned.

But Lester's still different like this, not quite James yet, still sharp, and aggressive, and disdainful. The way Ryan always thought he might be. It's a question that's bothered Ryan enough times, that getting the answer, leaves him both ready to face whatever's down in the lower levels, and strangely unsettled.

He lets his fingers uncurl, and leaves their separation, or not, to Lester.

It's not immediate, just long enough to murmur disapproval, before he's left with his mouth cooling in the chill, pollen-tainted, air.

Lester glares at him. And he really is _too_ good, Ryan can't tell if it's fake or not.

He's very nearly out the door, before Lester speaks again.

"Do try not to get eaten Captain Ryan, you really would be very hard to replace."

Lester doesn't look up from the paperwork on the desk.

Ryan heads for the bowels of the Arc.

 

 


End file.
